


she will be

by Gerbilfriend



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, I continue to have Jester feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:00:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24810451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerbilfriend/pseuds/Gerbilfriend
Summary: Teiflings choose their names with their hopes for the future, and Genevieve wants to decide who she will be
Relationships: Jester Lavorre & Marion Lavorre | Ruby of the Sea, Jester Lavorre & The Traveler
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	she will be

**Author's Note:**

> enjoy another random jester centric piece

She was supposed to choose a name based on what she was, she didn’t have to yet, her mamma told her, but her mamma wanted to make sure that she knew she had the option.

Genevieve thought for a moment. What was she?

She was six.

She was clever.

Her mamma called her her Little Saphire, but that was a title, like her Mamma was the Ruby of the Sea when she wasn’t her mamma.

There was really only one thing that she could think of the represented what she was. She had seen the word in one of her books.

“So I should be called Lonely?”.

Her mamma’s face twisted as she swept Genevieve-maybe-Lonely into a hug. “You do not have to choose now”.

“I don’t?”. 

“Do you wish to be lonely in the future?”.

Genevieve-maybe-Lonely thought about it. She didn’t like being lonely. She had her mamma and Blud and it was always nice when they were around and she wasn’t cold and quiet. 

Sapphires were stones and stones were quiet as well and-

Well, the answer to that question is easy. 

“I don’t want to be Lonely”. 

“Genevieve is a good name I hope”, her mamma said with a smile, “and you can keep it for as long as you wish. I just wanted you to have the option”.

And well, Genevieve wants to hug her mamma because she was there and warm so she does and it's nice and for a little bit Genevieve feels okay.

Maybe Okay should be her name? She would like to be okay.

Genevieve didn’t say anything though because her mamma was already sad and she didn’t get enough time with her mamma.

She didn’t want to waste it with either of them being sad.

“Did you pick your name?”. Her mamma was named Marion and it was a really pretty name but it didn’t sound like any of the words that Genevieve knew. 

“It means Lady of the Sea”.

It fits her mamma, Genevieve knows it fits her mamma. “That’s really pretty, do you think I will find a super pretty name”.

“I know you will, my little Sapphire”.

Genevieve does not choose a new name that day, she keeps thinking about it though, keeps thinking about who she wants to be.

She doesn’t want to be lonely her whole life, doesn’t want that to have to be her name.

She keeps thinking and nothing 

“What are you doing here!”, Geneviveve demands one day when she is seven. She knows she isn’t supposed to be out of her room but he isn’t supposed to be there either and-

“Hello there”, the man says looking at her with bright green eyes, “what are you doing here?”.

“I live here. Now go away”, Genevieve orders, baring her teeth and whipping her tail.

The man looks at her, “you are a brave little thing, aren’t you? Very well”.

He’s gone just like that.

_ Maybe I should call myself Brave,  _ Genevieve wonders. She had liked being brave, it had been scary but she had done it and the man was gone.

The man was gone.

Genevieve was alone again.

_ Maybe I should have been nice to him?  _ If she had been nice to him like her mamma was nice to people then she wouldn’t be alone now.

Brave was nice but it seemed to lead back to Lonely.

Genevieve did not want to be lonely.

Her mamma got more and more busy and Genevieve knew that was supposed to be a good thing because-

Because it meant her mamma wasn’t lonely?

Because it meant her mamma wasn’t sad about her dad anymore?

Genevieve wasn’t quite sure but she didn’t know what to say.

She just spent more time alone. She stared out the window a lot because she liked to read but then she had to finish the book and that just made her feel more lonely.

Outside was nice because it was pretty and it didn’t make her feel like she had friends for a little and when her mamma had time Genevieve could tell her about all the pretty things she saw.

One day Genevieve sees a little boy in a green clock.

More importantly, he sees her.

She jolted back from her window in shock. People weren’t supposed to see her, that was a rule. That was Important.

It would be bad for her mamma if people saw her and Genevieve didn’t want things to be bad for her mamma.

The boy was waving at her.

She waved back.

Suddenly the boy was right next to her, Jester stumbled back, ready to tell him to get out but she remembered about Brave and Lonely and-

“Hi”, she tried.

“Hi”, the boy offered back. “What are you doing?”, he asked.

“I’m looking out the window”.

“Well that's just boring, wouldn’t you like to do something interesting?”.

“I’ve already read all my books and I’m out of paints”.

“Don’t you want to leave this room?”.

“I’m not supposed to”. That didn’t mean she didn’t, of course, even though Blud got mad and her mamma got disappointed, Genevieve didn’t like it when her mamma was disappoint of course but sometimes, sometimes-

There was someone else here right now, with her.

Maybe this was one of those sometimes. Mind made up she grabbed the boy and started moving, maybe if she was interesting then she wouldn’t have to be Lonely.

He was interesting too. They end up playing hide and seek, he was confused by the game but once Genevieve explained it to him he seemed willing to give it a try and it was really fun!

They play for hours. Genevieve thinks they might be friends.

She’s never had a friend before.

Things get weird when she tries to introduce him to her mamma and he is just gone and her mamma tells her there was no boy but that was silly because Genevieve knew that there had been another kid there and that he had played with her.

He is gone afterward and that makes something else in Genevieve ache because she wasn’t Lonely but now she is again.

He comes back though. He comes back and plays with her.

He gets bored of hide and seek though and starts teaching her new games.

Games with magic.

Genevieve knows her mamma has magic, she has seen her mamma use it to make her eyes glow or for when she wants to show Genevieve something pretty!

Genevieve has magic as well now.

She makes weird sounds crack though the Chateau and lights dance in the corners of other’s eyes.

Once, she made Bluud jump so high his horns got stuck in the ceiling!

The boy had laughed when she told him that but Genevieve wished that she could show him.

That's why she started learning how to draw, draw draw, not just doodle cause she’s bored.

_ Maybe I should be Artist or Mischief?  _ Genevieve wondered. Artist would be a good name, but Artist would still be alone because that's when she draws.

Mischief was nice, but, but it wasn’t quite right.

Genevieve was her name for now even if it wasn’t her name-name and Mischief was just, Mischief was a maybe.

She was mischievous and she was alone. 

Genevieve needed help. But she didn’t want to ask her mamma again because she remembered her mamma’s face the last time she had asked about Lonely.

Genevieve didn’t want her mamma to be said. Luckily there was someone else that she could ask,

“What’s your name?”.

“My name?”.

“Yea, what's your name?”.

“What’s yours?”.

And that's how Genevieve realizes that she has never introduced herself to him. “I’m Genevieve”, she starts, but Genevieve doesn’t feel right and she doesn’t want to be Lonely, she isn’t not when the boy is around and-

“But?”.

“I don’t know how long I will be”, she tries. And then she tries to explain what her mamma had told her about teifling names and how she could choose again if she wants to because Genevieve doesn’t fit and she doesn’t want to be lonely and she can’t think of another name and-

Finally she runs out of breath.

The boy thinks for a minute and he looks serious under his hood which is funny because he never looks serious. It's nice though, because names are Important and she is glad that he cares.

“You know?”, he says, “I don’t think I’ve decided yet”.

He finds his name pretty quickly though. They’re talking while waiting for the results of their latest prank to be discovered and she says, “you’ve been to all sorts of cool places!”.

“I think I am the Traveler”, the Traveler tells her.

The Traveler is awesome and so is her mamma and Genevieve likes not being Lonely but she still is sometimes when the Traveler is gone but he says that he can still hear her anyways.

Genevieve is beginning to wonder if the Traveler is a god. It would make sense, he saw her when nobody else did and he is really awesome and super powerful and-

And Genevieve is pretty sure that he is a god.

She still doesn’t know what she wants to be.

She has her mamma and she has her best friend-god but she still doesn’t have her name and sometimes, sometimes when no one is around and she doesn’t have anything new to draw Lonely echos through her.

She is only a few steps away from being Lonely.

So she plays more pranks because she is nine now and has been trying to find a name for two years and it's hard.

Then one of her pranks went wrong. She didn’t mean for it to happen, she really didn’t.

Genevieve knows the rules of her home and she knows them well. Sometimes, the Traveler wants to break them, the really important ones. If he really wanted to, if he would leave if Genevieve didn’t break them then she thinks she would but she is lucky and she has a best friend that listens.

She tries not to break the important ones. The ones like saying her mamma is her mamma. She is older now and understands a little more that people like to imagine that her mamma is in love with them and knowing that she has a daughter makes that harder for them.

Genevieve doesn’t want to make things harder for her mamma so she tries not to break that rule, even if sometimes she wants to tell people because she loves her mamma so much and-

There’s the rule of don’t go outside without supervision as well, and Genevieve follows that rule because she tried it once and-

The Traveller had found her and helped her to get back before she had gotten in trouble but Genevieve still didn’t want to do it again.

The third Important Rule is not to disturb her mamma when she is with clients. Or with the other performers at the chateau. Her mamma is a bit lighter in the second half but it is still important and Genevieve tries.

Genevieve didn’t mean to break this rule, she didn’t realize the can of paint that she had left up would be moved by a minotaur other than Bluud but then it was and he was covered in rainbow sparkly paint, which was really pretty and Genevieve liked it a lot and thought that the minotaur looked much prettier now, but she had broken the rules.

The minotaur didn’t seem mad. Instead he asked her mamma if Genevieve could watch when he performed. “I like her Sparkle”, he said, tipping his head ironically as the paint dripped down his face.

Genevieve liked him. Sparkle was a nice name as well but it still didn’t feel right. Rocks sparkled but they were still alone and Genevieve did not want to be alone.

She got to sit at the front for once, he had insisted and it was a totally different view from peaking behind the curtains like when her mamma sang.

Her mamma was still the best singer and the best performer but Genevieve could feel the energy and the laughter and it was amazing!

She had never seen a performance like his where everybody laughed. It was like with her pranks and he got to do it for a job!

He got to do it and everybody saw him and thought he was super cool for it.

“Do you do that all the time?”, she asked, awed.

He threw her head back, his horns, still colored with her paint, sparkled as they shifted. “I’m a jester by trade”.

“A jester?”. She had never heard that word before.

“Yes, I work in courts to make people laugh”.

“That sounds like a really cool job. Why are you here then?”.

“Ah, I’m just passing through, The Ruby was nice enough to allow me to perform for the night. Did you enjoy my show”.

“I did! I was super awesome, like not as awesome as my- The Ruby”, Genevieve corrected herself at the last minute because it was important, “but super awesome!”. Everyone had been laughing. “Do really get to do that all the time?”. Genevieve hoped she wasn’t being annoying asking the same question again and again but she really needed to know.

“I really do”.

“Wow”.

He told her about all the places that he had been and all the places that he planned on going. About all the courts he had been in up and down the coast and all the super silly people he had met.

He told her about all the friends that he had made.

“You make them all laugh?”, she asked, wide eyed.

“That's my job”.

It really was a super cool job.

The next day he was gone. Genevieve drew his performance though, and tries to mimic his acts and the Traveler laughed. “I love your pranks too, you know”, he told her when she was done, “you are a delightful seed of chaos and I am glad to crossed paths with you”.

No one had ever told Genevieve that they were glad to have met her before. It feels warm, like Lonely is a few steps farther away.

Genevieve still doesn’t want to be Lonely.

She’s eight now too, and eight is old! Her mamma told her about names when she was five and Genevieve still remembers it because it was Important but she still doesn’t know.

She’s eight.

“What do you think I should be?”, she asked the Traveler the next time he was there.

He cocked his head, silent for a second. “Don’t you know the answer to that?”.

Genevieve huffed. He was right though, she should know what she wanted to be. She knew what she didn’t want to be. Lonely.

She was lonely when the Traveler was gone and her mamma was gone. She wasn’t lonely when she was pulling pranks because the Traveler was with her.

She threw herself back onto her bed.

She bounced.

It was fun so she did it again.

And again.

Then she had to lie down though because she was tired and she still was not any closer to descending on a real name.

Genevieve was lonely. Genevieve had the Traveler and her mamma and Bluud but she was still lonely.

Her mamma wasn’t lonely and her mamma was a super pretty singer but-

But-

Genevieve wasn’t sure she wanted to be her mamma. Sometimes, sometimes her mamma seemed really sad and Genevieve didn’t want to be sad.

She wanted to be happy.

She wanted a job that would make her happy.

Something sparkled on her ceiling, a splash of paint that she had left behind and Genevieve remembered the prank she had pulled.

She remembered the jester.

He had made people happy. He had seemed happy. 

That sounded nice.

“Jester”, she said, once, twice, feeling the word twist over her tongue, “Jester”.

It felt like a name. A name of a not lonely girl who got to laugh and go on adventures and had friends and made them laugh.

The Jester had had friend he got to make laugh, he didn’t seem lonely at all.

“Jester”, she said again and got out her art pad, writing it out. “Jester”, she repeated, feeling it sink into her skin.

She was Jester and she loved to laugh and make other people laugh. People were happy when they laughed.

She had made the Traveler happy so he had stayed with her. She made her mamma happy so her mamma stayed with her.

Jester was the name of a happy girl who had one mamma and one god and made them both happy.

Jester was the name of a girl who was going to grow up and make others laugh and never have to be Lonely again.

Jester had found her name. She just had to figure out who to tell first.

  
  



End file.
